


Fulmina Belli

by sevenofspade



Category: Ancient History RPF
Genre: M/M, Psychic Wolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 21:28:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3355898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/pseuds/sevenofspade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scipio meets Hannibal for the first time at the fields of Zama, before the battle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fulmina Belli

**Author's Note:**

> Credit goes to Sineala for encouraging me to write this (and the name of Scipio's wolf) and to Melannen for the idea of what to give to Hannibal as a bondsibling and as such you can blame them for the existence of this fic.
> 
> The title is Latin for "Thunderbolts of war", which is something Scipio has been called by Vergil and "Barca" means "thunderbolt" in Phoenician.

Hannibal had asked to speak with him and so Scipio, who had been waiting for this for a very long time, had said yes and so here they were.

Hannibal was taller than Scipio was and Scipio was surprised not to see a bondsibling by his side. He knew Carthage also kept the tradition of bondsiblings -- although they did not, of course, bond with wolves -- and if Hannibal had been bonded once, as a boy, maybe, and now had no one by his side...

"You speak Greek?" Scipio asked in that same language, unwilling to go further down that trail of thoughts, even with Alecto leaning her warm weight against his leg, not enough to make him stumble, but enough to remind him of her presence.

Hannibal smiled like the sun rising over the Alps and said, "Yes."

Scipio sent away the interpreters and once they were alone -- it seemed both of them had honoured the request for no guards -- he waited for Hannibal to speak.

"You're very trusting," Hannibal said.

"I've nothing to fear from you," Scipio replied.

"If you say so," Hannibal said. It was not a threat, but the promise of one lurked beneath it.

The collar of Hannibal's cloak moved like something living and when the tiny head of a desert fox emerged, the look Hannibal gave it was one Scipio was intimately familiar with; it was the look a soldier would share with their bond sibling.

Scipio had heard the many, many jokes that were inflicted on men whose bond siblings were somehow outside of the norm -- too female, too gone, too small. He'd made a few -- and suffered more -- of them himself, but right then, the only thing he could think, looking at Hannibal, was: _This is a man who has nothing to prove_.

It was true, too. If there had ever been a time where Hannibal Barca had had anything to prove to anyone, it had been a long time ago, before he brought Rome to its knees, before Cannae, before the Alps.

Before Scipio ever even heard of him.

Scipio reached out a hand, palm down and looked straight into Hannibal's seeing eye as he asked, "May I?"

Hannibal's wary face turned into a slight frown. He looked at Scipio like he could see past the scarlet-edged toga of the Consul and past the armour of the general to the scared boy who'd barely survived Cannae. He might even remember the boy who'd traded glances with him at Ticinus, before that first arrow had flown and hit his -- the Consul.

Whatever the reason, Hannibal's face -- didn't soften, exactly, because they were standing on the plains of Zama and they both knew what was a stake here, but -- grew marginally less wary and he gathered up the fox, who fit perfectly into his hands.

"You may." He held out the fox.

Scipio reached out a hand to pat its head. Hannibal pushed the fox further out at him, so Scipio scooped it up delicately. At his feet, Alecto got up from where she'd wound herself around his legs. Through their bond, he got the smell of hot desert sand and the feel of it sticking to paws -- the fox's name in the language of wolves. Scipio expected Hannibal's name to follow and was rewarded by a smell it took him a moment to place.

It was the smell of a thunderstrike.

In reply, Scipio had Alecto send forth his own smell -- orange blossoms and swordmetal -- then her own. Hannibal, it seemed, took no time at all to place that one, his eye widening for the briefest of moments.

It was the smell of Cannae after the battle had been over; Scipio had bonded rather late.

The fox seemed to Scipio small, even by the standards of desert foxes.

There had been quite a few foxes who had lingered around the Roman camp and now Scipio wondered if one of them had been Hannibal's. Bond animals were far smarter than their wild counterparts and if any man was ruthless enough to risk his bond sibling being killed by accident or design for a chance at victory, it was Hannibal Barca.

The fox felt tiny and warm and so very very fragile beneath Scipio's fingers. Its skull almost fit within one of his hands. He could kill it easily enough and the resulting pain, both mental and physical, would cripple Hannibal for long enough that the battle would be no contest.

"You're very trusting," Scipio said, returning his words to Hannibal and not looking at him as he did so.

"I've nothing to fear from you," Hannibal said, doing the same

Scipio handed the fox back to Hannibal. "Not yet."

This too was not a threat.

The fox burrowed in Hannibal's arms and wrapped around his neck when Hannibal raised it there.

"You mean to fight, then," Hannibal said.

"Yes," Scipio said. It was strange. He had wished his whole life as a man to defeat Hannibal, but now that the moment was there, he felt empty. Even his bond with Alecto felt hollow, even though she'd never known anything else from him.

"Were I to offer my surrender, would you change your mind?" Hannibal said and Scipio knew enough of Hannibal to know he would not make an offer if he did not mean it.

Alecto butted her head against Scipio's hand, so he turned away from Hannibal and knelt to scratch her behind the ears. "No." 

"And if I were to go down on my knees?"

Scipio looked up sharply. Hannibal was smiling a smile Scipio couldn't read -- or chose not to.

The fox was nowhere to be seen.

"As tempting as that offer is," Scipio started as he got to his feet and almost stopped when Hannibal's smile widened into a grin Scipio could no longer pretend he didn’t know the meaning of, "I must respectfully refuse."

"Some other time," Hannibal said, almost like a question.

"Perhaps," Scipio said. "If we live through tomorrow." And perhaps years from now they would meet again in some fresh country beyond the sea, where their war would have never been and they could be friends.

Hannibal held out his hand to Scipio. "Good luck."

"I do not need luck."

"Young men never do."

Scipio gripped Hannibal's forearm and stepped forward, until he could feel the other man's breath on his face. There, their blood beating in time beneath their skin, he said, "You're not that old yourself."

Hannibal was a handsome man still and if there had been Consuls younger than him, there had been Consuls older, too. He had a life in front of him; Scipio was eager to see what he would do with it.

"Perhaps."

It was not a surprise when Hannibal kissed him. If their war had never been, it would have mattered, but their war was and so Scipio pulled back.

He did so with regret and because he had a war to win. 

"Good luck," Scipio said. He did not think Hannibal needed luck any more than he did; what they had become they owed no one but themselves -- and each other.

Hannibal smiled his desert fox smile as Scipio turned on his heel and walked away, back straight and Alecto at his side.

Perhaps their war need not never have been and needed simply be over.

Perhaps.


End file.
